As a native Michigander, it would not do for me to round out my internship without paying homage to Russell Kirk. He, too, was a native of the Great Lakes State. Born in Plymouth, he taught for a time at Michigan State before making his home in the village of Mecosta. Despite this, he famously disclaimed our state’s major export — the automobile, which he called a “mechanical Jacobin” — an important reminder that sometimes one must simply refuse to accommodate oneself to modernity.
Kirk is the quintessential conservative theorist. It helps that he defined the term for our era, offering something less totalizing than ideology but more concrete than mere disposition with his “six canons of conservative thought.” He recognized that the conservative project is not one of inventing a philosophy anew. It is instead the practice of piety, which involves reverence for the Creator alongside the cultivation of the family ties and social order that shape us. This defense of tradition also provided a needed counterbalance against the libertarian strands of the fusionist coalition he helped build.
Rather than try to encapsulate the fullness of Kirk’s vast legacy, let me share a particularly striking passage from the conclusion of The Roots of American Order, one that ought to remind conservatives that our task is greater than merely resisting the progressive cause du jour.
To protest against the existence of order is to protest against well-being, justice, freedom, and prosperity. Happiness is found in imaginative affirmation, not in sullen negation. Gratitude is one form of happiness; and anyone who appreciates the legacy of moral and social order which he has inherited in America will feel gratitude. The pursuit of happiness is not altogether vain. One finds happiness in restoring and improving the order of the soul and the order of the republic—not in acts of devastation that make a desert of spirit and of society.
It feels nearly futile to try to add to that, so let me just say this: I am deeply grateful for Russell Kirk, and for the opportunity to work in the house that he helped build.